El Pequeno Ganso Verde: The Little Green Goose

K-Gr 4-The lone gander on a farm longs to be a father. After all the hens refuse to donate an egg for him to care for, the farmhouse dog finds a large, apparently abandoned egg, which the gander adopts. The small dinosaur that hatches is perfectly happy with his gander ""mother"" until the chicks point out that the two of them look nothing alike. And thus begins the baby's search for his ""real"" mother. This book will challenge youngsters with its vocabulary and sentence structure as well as its broad-minded look at adoption from both a child's and a parent's viewpoints. With its positive, though merely implied message that a family can be built upon a caring relationship, as well as upon blood relation, this story will also prove useful for counselors, teachers, and parents working with children on the concepts of adoptive and foster homes. For children, however, the real hooks are the baby dinosaur's search and the perhaps illuminating insight that adults don't simply ""become"" parents many earnestly desire to have children. Marks's illustrations are active and expressive watercolors with outlined edges. Coop Renner, Paul C. Moreno Elementary, El Paso, TX